Adventures in medicine
Jun. 25th, 2010 06:16 pmI woke up in the early hours this morning with stomach cramps and chest pains, and I was like, "Wow. If this gets any more serious, I should probably put on some clothes and walk down to the emergency roZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz."
(There is a private hospital around the corner from our house. It also has an emergency room, for which, I presume, any unlucky visitors aren't billed? Anyway, the pains did not get worse, so I never found out.)
When I woke up, it was eight am, and I was not going to work. Instead, I phoned work (I fear they are growing weary of my absenteeism) and then found a doctor. Any doctor.
I wound up at the Moreland Medical Centre. It was not bulk billing, so I got an appointment almost immediately, and off I went.
The doctor, I would like to say, was very nice. Friendly, welcoming and unjudgmental. But I knew this had been a waste of time when he looked at the medical history form I'd filled in and said, "Rheumatoid arthritis? You can't have rheumatoid arthritis!"
I gave him a potted history, and explained about my belly, including the fact that I have a lactose tolerance test scheduled for next week.
"Lactose. That's milk, right?"
Anyway, his conclusion is that I have some kind of gastro-intestinal problem, and should take antacids and eat small meals, and have no more than one standard drink with meals. THANK YOU, DOCTOR, THAT WAS WELL WORTH $55. Suddenly the trip across town to my doctor in St Kilda doesn't seem so lengthy.
Afterwards, I caught the train up to Coburg, and Medicare refunded $30 of the $55 I'd paid. But $25 is still a lot of money in exchange for what I already knew. On the way back I stopped in at the Coles (which is randomly opposite another Coles?), where I discovered that Quorn has finally been released in Australia (only when I got home,![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
suburbannoir pointed out that piecesofalice can't have it, because it contains gluten in its most deadly form, barley malt extract thingie.
And I somehow fell into the library, and came away with a book about Sesame St, one on film adaptations of Jane Austen, and a behind-the-scenes book on season three of Babylon 5. Along with all of this, I am reading Wolf Hall on my Kobo (so far: the most ridiculously beautifully-written historical fiction I've read in years, and a really extraordinary portrait of the legal and political machinations of Henry VIII's court. And all without the king actually appearing, so far.) so I guess I won't run out of books in the near future.
I also found the DVD of The Dismissal, the 1983 dramatisation of the ... well, the Dismissal. After yesterday, I was in the mood for more crazy Australian politics shenanigans, and two episodes in, I am not disappointed. It's possibly the best piece of television that had only two non-secretarial female roles in the opening credits (out of, like, a dozen middle-aged white men) that I've ever seen. And yes, that is a rather narrow field in which to judge things, but really, I saw the credits and predicted bad things.
But no! Even the fact that it's an Australian miniseries from 1983 doesn't seem too apparent, although it helps that there's a lot of file footage mixed in with the dramatisation. I like it enough that, if it holds up, I may share it with the rest of the class. Oh come on, you totally want to watch a six-hour miniseries about political events that took place 25 years ago in Australia!
I'm thinking of creating a drinking game, like, Do a shot whenever Whitlam addresses someone as "Comrade", do a shot whenever Jim Cairnes does something amazingly stupid OH MY GOD HOW CAN AN EDUCATED AND INTELLIGENT MAN BE SO DAMN STUPID??; do a shot whenever someone tries to borrow an absurd amount of money from overseas bankers without having anything like the proper authority.
In other, terrible news,baggers has just informed me that we live in a pizza delivery blackspot. NO ONE WILL DELIVER TO US! From the major pizza chains, I mean; presumably, this being Brunswick, we can have any kind of boutique pizza we like delivered to our door. But sometimes, you know, you're in the mood for the oversalted goodness of Dominos. Why do they deny us? WHY?
(There is a private hospital around the corner from our house. It also has an emergency room, for which, I presume, any unlucky visitors aren't billed? Anyway, the pains did not get worse, so I never found out.)
When I woke up, it was eight am, and I was not going to work. Instead, I phoned work (I fear they are growing weary of my absenteeism) and then found a doctor. Any doctor.
I wound up at the Moreland Medical Centre. It was not bulk billing, so I got an appointment almost immediately, and off I went.
The doctor, I would like to say, was very nice. Friendly, welcoming and unjudgmental. But I knew this had been a waste of time when he looked at the medical history form I'd filled in and said, "Rheumatoid arthritis? You can't have rheumatoid arthritis!"
I gave him a potted history, and explained about my belly, including the fact that I have a lactose tolerance test scheduled for next week.
"Lactose. That's milk, right?"
Anyway, his conclusion is that I have some kind of gastro-intestinal problem, and should take antacids and eat small meals, and have no more than one standard drink with meals. THANK YOU, DOCTOR, THAT WAS WELL WORTH $55. Suddenly the trip across town to my doctor in St Kilda doesn't seem so lengthy.
Afterwards, I caught the train up to Coburg, and Medicare refunded $30 of the $55 I'd paid. But $25 is still a lot of money in exchange for what I already knew. On the way back I stopped in at the Coles (which is randomly opposite another Coles?), where I discovered that Quorn has finally been released in Australia (only when I got home,
suburbannoir pointed out that piecesofalice can't have it, because it contains gluten in its most deadly form, barley malt extract thingie. And I somehow fell into the library, and came away with a book about Sesame St, one on film adaptations of Jane Austen, and a behind-the-scenes book on season three of Babylon 5. Along with all of this, I am reading Wolf Hall on my Kobo (so far: the most ridiculously beautifully-written historical fiction I've read in years, and a really extraordinary portrait of the legal and political machinations of Henry VIII's court. And all without the king actually appearing, so far.) so I guess I won't run out of books in the near future.
I also found the DVD of The Dismissal, the 1983 dramatisation of the ... well, the Dismissal. After yesterday, I was in the mood for more crazy Australian politics shenanigans, and two episodes in, I am not disappointed. It's possibly the best piece of television that had only two non-secretarial female roles in the opening credits (out of, like, a dozen middle-aged white men) that I've ever seen. And yes, that is a rather narrow field in which to judge things, but really, I saw the credits and predicted bad things.
But no! Even the fact that it's an Australian miniseries from 1983 doesn't seem too apparent, although it helps that there's a lot of file footage mixed in with the dramatisation. I like it enough that, if it holds up, I may share it with the rest of the class. Oh come on, you totally want to watch a six-hour miniseries about political events that took place 25 years ago in Australia!
I'm thinking of creating a drinking game, like, Do a shot whenever Whitlam addresses someone as "Comrade", do a shot whenever Jim Cairnes does something amazingly stupid OH MY GOD HOW CAN AN EDUCATED AND INTELLIGENT MAN BE SO DAMN STUPID??; do a shot whenever someone tries to borrow an absurd amount of money from overseas bankers without having anything like the proper authority.
In other, terrible news,
baggers has just informed me that we live in a pizza delivery blackspot. NO ONE WILL DELIVER TO US! From the major pizza chains, I mean; presumably, this being Brunswick, we can have any kind of boutique pizza we like delivered to our door. But sometimes, you know, you're in the mood for the oversalted goodness of Dominos. Why do they deny us? WHY?
